Hugh, Hannah, & Andrew discuss a handful of interesting recent exoplanet papers from the past few months. We chat about the news coverage of K2-18b and the claims of biomarkers in that atmosphere, new discoveries, exciting atmospheres, and haze formation.
Hannah dives into the controversy of K2-18b and the announcement of DMS (a biomarker on Earth) detection amongst a methane dominated spectrum “Carbon-bearing Molecules in a Possible Hycean Atmosphere” by Madhusudhan et al.. The team discuss the responsibility we have as scientists to portray the statistics (in this case the lack of evidence to support the claim) to the press and how extraordinary claims require extraordinary care.
Hugh highlights a new discovery of “A close-in giant planet escapes engulfment by its star” by Hon et al.
And finally, Andrew explores “Planetary Scale Information Transmission in the Biosphere and Technosphere: Limits and Evolution” by Lingham et al.
Exocast is edited by Fergus Hall. Image credit: Artistic ilustration of planet K2-18b, its star K2-18 and the second planet K2-18. Credit: Alex Boersma
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Thanks for bringing up the issue with wikipedia. For now I did not edit the DMS page, but I made an edit on the K2-18b page with a citation of the article “The Skinny on Detecting Life with the JWST” by Katherine Wright (Physics Magazine). This way others at least know that there is an issue and wikipedia users might expand on it.